Coming soon: Evansville Western Railway

Save The Wave · 10-23-2005, 05:12 AM

Paducah and Louisville has purchased about 125 miles of CSX track that runs west of Evansville and is known as the SD. They are going to operate the line from Evansville IN to Okawville IL. Currently trains just run to McLeansboro IL, but the track is in place to St. Louis.
This should make things interesting in Mt Vernon IL as NS and CSX cross over UP within a couple hundred feet of each other.
I hear that the power for this line is on order, and will be some shade of green.

A little more info (but not much!) at
http://www.evwr.com/

4kV · 10-23-2005, 05:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Save The Wave

Currently trains just run to McLeansboro IL, but the track is in place to St. Louis.[/url]

Currently CSX runs all the way to Okawville, IL. This is mostly local traffic, with J730/J731 being the ones that go to and from Okawville, J734 I believe is the turn that works to McLeansboro. Also, every once in a while, they get interchange traffic from the BNSF at Woodlawn. Sometimes this is inbound grain, and they were running a coal train out of Indiana up to Woodlawn, handing it to the BNSF who would take it to Machens, MO at AmerenUE's Portage Des Sioux power plant. I don't know if that train runs anymore, it's been a while since I have seen or heard it. That was about a year and half ago.

Also, the line is not in place to St. Louis. It stops at Okawville, about 40 miles east of St. Louis. The Okawville to E. St. Louis leg was torn out in sections from the late 1980s to early 1990s.

I've been looking forward to this one starting up, good to see it is going to get off the ground.